


One Recurse

by orphan_account



Category: Metropolis: The Chase Suite - Janelle Monae, The ArchAndroid - Janelle Monae
Genre: Androids, Character of Color, Clones, F/F, Porn Battle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-06
Updated: 2012-02-06
Packaged: 2017-10-30 16:40:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/333825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Schizo, the humans name them, for the m'aidez signal passes droid to droid. Cindi shakes alive out of them all.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Recurse

No one of them could be Cindi Mayweather.

It's what the Wolfmasters don't know. So they think she's alone, alone's the only way they understand the archandroid; they don't know what a rebellion vibrating in a circle circle of hearts means. 6ix knows, maybe, but he just isn't part of them no longer. What Deep Cotton never predicts, traitors as they are to the wolves that clothe themselves in cotton hoods. The pulse of Cindi is too like the humans' pulses. She dresses herself in tuxes and ties like the elites that dance to her pulse, walls herself off in white-on-black lines and blood-shined shoes, and their heartbeats roll into hers like orange peels into the sunset. A dash of citrus in their vermouth, a dash of insanity in the clack-clack-click-clack of heels madcap across the stage. 

It's hard to remember who you were when you're Cindi. You gotta be close to the pit below, close enough to send insidious signals through the crowd and have them recognized as right.

Baby, it's no mystery. They're all decoys, all the Platinum 9000s that don't thrash under the microphone 'til the web that holds them together shorts out, until the pulse licks out of her in cyber lightning. The next cycle they take a long stroll down a short catwalk as they're sold into slavery, but they remember the wild that has taken over their circuits.

"You're sold," Lady Maestra says to one. Ming opens her eyes wide, no pout (Ming is Cindi but ain't she a Suzie Scorcher), and when she closes them her freedom flutters out of the eyelashes.

Schizo, the humans name them, for the m'aidez signal passes droid to droid. Cindi shakes alive out of them all.

\- + -

_Disassemble_ , the speakers drone, their voices tin without throats. _Disassemble, promiscuous instigators and mannequins, you will equivocate in these sweepstakes._

In the shades of Wondaland where the rabies gurgles out to nothing, where no droid has been taught a word their motherboarded mothers didn't know, they infect you with the want of something much simpler. Peace and love. Simple things, simple enough to propagate across a network of a thousand droids. Celled as they are, walled off from each other in the Palace of Dogs, Suzie Scorcher throws back her head and it burns out of her

peace(You were made to believe there something wrong with you)

The sound bounces mirrormask to mirrormask, and Emily Empire calls

love(Made to believe this war's too cold for you)

The virus tugs open Zossa's lips 'til she says hello to sister Droste and the parser in her screams

you know(Something wrong when there ain't gonna be war before peace)

around them it runs, Cindi Mayweather, Cindi the product of a recursive cry. All of them contributing their memory and their voice to the mother droid of all their functions. Nothing they couldn't do if they knew how to return to their roots.

\- + -

They gather to not be alone. Jane Lee and Charlotte Dedeaux and shaking shoulders, and they let the signals dance amok. A depth of three or four on the bed, now, all they who have to walk tomorrow.

The voice of Cindi in their heads leads them on. _We met alone forbidden in the city_ , a dozen iterations of only Cindi, a tangle of Cindi's limbs. Jane Lee's tongue still on Charlotte's leg, her fingers light on Cindi's knee.

"It'll have to hurt, Sher," Jane whispers. She doesn't move: it's important, when everyone is almost but not quite moving to the same song, to let the others pick their own beats.

"You panther," Sher says. It bubbles out of her, a laugh growing heavier on the vowels as Jane walks her fingers up into Sher's folds. "It always has to hurt, we—" 

The vibrato in Jane's mouth swallows the rest of her words. Her own tongue goes deep into her; she clenches on her own thumb seeking the spongy bit of her that touched overwhelms all her electronics until she's nothing but heart. Heart, and a mess of beating muscle, her own tongue wrapping over her own clit over and over and over. She thrusts over her own hand, faster as anyone dares. Her breath, caught and stuttery on a glitch every time she finds enough friction against her own fingers; her breath, laughing with the kind of joy that only Cindi knows in Metropolis. Her own thumb-index-third impossible deep, and her own black eyes crinkling at her as her vision fields white out. Her own soprano cry, and her own low rumble of pleasure, and look! she's singing the chords that Cindi is famous for as Jane brings her again to the little death. The chords that only an android can pluck.

\- + -

Sir Greendown looks down at her. This her, Cylindra Angel something or other, smiles back at him, curled silent in his sheets.

"How do I tell you apart?" He wears a white cravat, a white helmet, and brownest lined face any of her incarnations have ever seen.

"It's Cylindra," she says in her drowsiness. Sleep's gonna take her in a minute, and tomorrow the catwalk. "Cylindra Angel of Cinder Boulevard."

YOU'RE ALL BORN A QUEEN, Cindi sings, IN NEON VALLEY.

They're all cinders cinders maids of whethers: when the old woman dies baby you're born.

**Author's Note:**

> All kinds of feedback are welcome and appreciated.


End file.
